Business Articles Research

International law classes set for TU students

International legal experts will be teaching courses open to University of Tulsa College of Law students in Dublin and Geneva next summer.The Institute in European and International Law in Dublin is from June 5 to July 3.Three two-week sessions in Geneva will examine the Institute on Indigenous Peoples Law. Session one, an entire four-week program is set for July 3 through July 31.Session two will be offered July 3 through July 17. Session three, business law and human rights law courses will be offered July 17 through July 31.Instructors are American experts on international law and Irish experts on European Union law, said D. Marianne Blair, TU law professor and study abroad director. Irish academics also maintain active law practices.Blair, who will teach international family law in Dublin, will be part of the staff, which includes Suzanne Kingston, professor at University College Dublin who specializes in EU law; Seamus Clarke, professor, lecturer and tutor at Kings Inn in Dublin who specializes in international intellectual property; TU Professor Ray Yasser, who concentrates on selected issues in international and comparative sports law; UCD Professor Mary Catherine Lucey, who lectures about European community competition (antitrust) law; Paul Ward, UCD professor and senior lecturer in law, specifically international children’s rights; Dublin Institute of Technology Professor Bruce Carolan, head of the department of legal studies who concentrates on international trade regulation; and Fergus Ryan, director of the legal studies department and legal internships at DIT.The Geneva program has two separate sessions, each two weeks long, Blair said.The first half is on international indigenous peoples law.Students will be able to observe closely and also be involved with the Native American Legal Center at TU, she said. Professor Julian Burger, who has spent years with the indigenous people section with the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights will teach. Burger’s work has focused on the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169 concerning indigenous and tribal people in independent countries, Blair said. The comparative portion of the class may depend on the groups present in Geneva during the summer.Burger is internationally renowned and has taught this course for about eight years, she said. It gives students the opportunity to observe working sessions of UN groups as they address various issues. That session will be especially significant this summer because the Expert Mechanism on Rights of Indigenous People will be in Geneva for one week during the summer, the first time since the meeting was held there in 2002.Professor G. William Rice will discuss “Indian and Indigenous Peoples Law: Lands and Territories.”“This course will examine the developing role of the international law and legal system as it relates to laws of the U.S. respecting indigenous peoples of this country,” Blair said.One of the course objectives is to help students understand and appreciate how the development of international norms, standards and practice may impact the development of federal and tribal law, as well as the environment in which they will practice Indian law.TU Professor Melissa Tatum will look at law and culture, discussing how countries possess a dominant national culture while at the same time contain minority and indigenous groups with their own well-developed cultures and the inevitable clash over issues.TU Professor Rex Zedalis will teach business law and human rights law courses.Zedalis will discuss international business transactions, specifically the international economic rules of GATT/WTO.The survey course will examine the basic favorable nation and national treatment obligations of the GATT, the use of both quantitative and nonquantitative prohibitions and restrictions on international trade, the restraints and responses to the practices of dumping and subsidization, and the activity of government procurement on trade.Professor Scott Leckie will review “social and economic rights as universal human rights.”This course will explore the contours and outer limits of human rights law.These rights are expanding beyond the U.S. Bill of Rights style that guarantees free speech and freedom of assembly, Blair said. More and more national and international human rights instruments now encompass the right to education, health care and housing. The course surveys the current status of those rights throughout the world and examines the theoretical underpinnings for regarding such rights as universal human rights.Leckie, who now lives in Australia, returns to Geneva annually to teach this course, she said.